Oh yes, its 2009! and so much has happened this year already!
Disclaimer...ok here's the deal...its 10.30 pm in Tauranga NZ right now..and it appears that I'm in a very strange mood...and i just convicted myself of how bad i am at procrastinating! I just posted a comment on a friends blog! and well i managed to do that so why shouldn't i post on my own blog! simple huh...anyways the disclaimer is...i have no idea what I'm about to post...verbal diarrhoea i think they call it! so i will probably apologize in advance!
So i just got back from just over a week away with a Lane: friend, come partner in crime for the past month or so and fellow staffy staffer on the upcoming Discipleship Training school! We we so so blessed with a place to stay and awesome meals at a friends parents house in New Plymouth on the west coast of NZ in an area called Taranaki, or the Naki for short! By day,(which generally started at 6 or something ridiculous,apparently the surf is good then, no wind or something!) Lane surfed, myself far to scared to brave the ferocious waves of the west coast, so I hung out on the beach, learnt quite alot about surfing and got a bit of a tan! And by night we had dinner, hung out with our friends parents and their lodger and then went to bed! It was wonderful! Actually on a more serious note...wow a serious moment...it was just great to get away from living on the ship for a while take some time out to focus on God and do some praying and reading and just relaxing, after the busy past 6 months!
Lane and I both had our birthdays whilst we were away..and the two of them were well...quiet different! On mine we went to the beach in the morning and then I wanted starbucks..it had been a while and i still had a voucher left that was a gift at the end of the last school! But i actually got it for free 'cause Lane told the guy that it was my birthday! Thank you starbucks New Plymouth, the Caramel Macchiato was wonderful!! Dinner consisted of Kiwi tucker all round! We had an NZ delicacy, White bait...they are real small fish and you just eat it all,yep the whole thing guts and eyes the lot! they don't really taste of much but they were good, we had them in these pancake type things, then we had Lamb for main and the Kiwi Pavlova for desert! yummy yummy yummy! OK so that was my birthday... On Lanes we decided to head up north about 2 and half hours to Raglan...this place apparently is the 9th top surf spot (or so the surf magazine suggests) Unfortunately we got there and there was no real waves to surf! hmm...and we didn't have a place to stay! OK Ive got to pause here!
Tiki tour...this is a kiwi term for just a bit of a random outing..not really planned, just having a look round, see whats happening in a different place! so yeah that's what we had embarked on out little 'road trip' as we previously called it before we were enlightened on the term 'Tiki tour'
OK so being the nature of a Tiki tour..or the kind of tiki tour we were on, we just headed off with no real plans...including a place to stay! and well frankly sleeping in the van was an option but very highly undesirable! We had kind of got this thing in our heads that we should just find a church and see we could crash in the church and hope that they would take pity on us and would invite us to their home! oh another thing...we were trying to spend as little money as possible..so checking into a backpackers/hostel was very much out of the question! So anyways..i kinda said to God..OK if were gonna do this which church should we go to! Then just a couple of minutes later...we drive past a house and i noticed a sign hanging out side saying...Christian Fellowship! surprising actually because we had already driven down this road about 3 times already on our exploration of the town! so we stopped outside and on the advice of a friend via a telephone conversation (Thanks Dahvede!) we decided to go chat to the guy who was sat out front and just see where the conversation lead to! Well a half hour later and an interesting chat with Ken (who was actually blind) he calls his wife and just checks with her if its OK if we have dinner with them and stay the night! They had only been living there a year and just recently had their one large spare room converted into 2! Perfect! So we were truly blessed! Also turns out that Ken had done a DTS with YWAM many years ago, before he had met his wife Julia! So that was 'sweet as' as the kiwi's would say! An all round wondeful trip, picking up our 4th and final Staffer Caroline arriving from the highest mountains in switzerland the next day in Auckland!
Great Im so proud that i blogged but my energy levels are now dropping, so I should be wise and stop the rambling for now and start getting ready for bed. I have another full day of staff training tomorrow, which is quiet fun, but it requires brain power! Actually today i learnt again that my personality type is very much that of a golden retriever with a beaver coming in second! interesting, perhaps I'll blog about that when I'm next in this strange random mood!
(Good job i just ran the spell check..it was quiet incomprehesible!)
